He was a theoretical physicist, so I suspected that he had had a knack for science from an early age.
“Not at all,” he said. “I was still undecided even in high school. Then, in the 11th grade, we had to choose a direction–humanities or STEM. I chose humanities. But then, in the summer, I did some preparatory school, and I went to the math teacher, who started teaching me about trigonometric equations.
He put the whole thing in such a context that it made a lot of sense to me. He would show me a card with an equation, and I would look at it and say, ‘Hmm, so the solution is this, right?’ And then he would show me another one, and another one, and I would solve each of them in my head and then give him the solution.
He called the other math teacher and said, ‘Hey, come here to see this phenomenon!’
And I felt so inspired, because someone made me feel like I wasn’t an idiot. It’s not that the equations were so difficult, or that I was really a phenomenon. It’s just that someone, for the first time, had behaved as if I wasn’t stupid. Until that point, everyone else had always acted as if I was stupid. And if all of the teachers treat you like you’re stupid, you’re going to end up thinking that you really are stupid.
I find that most people have been discouraged by bad experiences that they’ve had with bad teachers. They went to high school and perhaps found out that they were really stupid in the subjects of math or science. And when I ask them why, they say, ‘Well, because I couldn’t do
the exercises.’ But when I ask whether they could remember why they couldn’t do the exercises, most of the time it turns out that they either had no guidance, or that the way they were taught was so stifling, so boring.
The fact is, most people are not stupid, because they are creative and productive with their lives, and that’s all the intelligence you need even to do theoretical physics. There are, of course, the exceptional few who are geniuses, but there aren’t enough geniuses to populate the entire world of science. We need more than one in a million people in order to successfully do science. The rest of the scientists who aren’t geniuses are just like you and me. There’s nothing more to it.”
Rebellions are built on hope 